


Some Notes Concerning the Persistence of Witch-Cults in Rural Southern Ontario

by gloss



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Bff feels, Gen, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-08 20:30:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18902092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: David is tasked with finding the officiant for his marriage to Patrick. He gets off-course almost immediately, but that's really Stevie's fault, let's be honest.





	Some Notes Concerning the Persistence of Witch-Cults in Rural Southern Ontario

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know. For ffw challenge "magic" and birthday bingo "identity" square.

While Patrick was away at the Entrepreneurial Retreat, David had one job. The chore wheel and spreadsheet were very clear on that. One job: Find the officiant for their wedding.

After a morning of intense research — actually, five minutes on Google and one aborted phone call — David simply could not believe that there is a charge to do weddings. He dropped into the booth across from Stevie, already complaining. "It's a joyful occasion, isn't it? Supposedly!"

"You know what they always say," Stevie murmured, more to her cup of gazpacho then anywhere else, "You _can_ put a price on joy."

"What? What are you saying?"

"Nothing." She straightened up and nudged her soup away. "Please, continue your rant."

He cleared his throat, then adjusted one dolman sleeve with both precision and dignity. "Thank you. As I was saying —"

"Ranting."

"— this _completely_ unexpected, impossible to predict expense could just be enough to DESTROY everything I have ever dreamed of."

"Mm-hmm," she replied when he paused to look at her expectantly. "Patrick still enforcing that dragon budget?"

"Draconian," David said. "And yes. Yes, he is."

Stevie had seen, more times than she was entirely comfortable about, the spreadsheet and chore wheel, as well as the enormous countdown calendar that hung right beside David's main (not auxiliary, that one was portable) vision board. Lest they revisit those topics, she made some more noncommitally reassuring noises.

"...at this point, we'll probably have to get Roland to do the wedding! Mayors have that power, right? Like sea captains. They're the captains of the town. On land..." David trailed off as the metaphor got away from him.

"Roland?" Stevie snorted. "He'd charge you through the nose. Your whole family's noses, probably."

As David slumped down, the booth's vinyl protested, an echo of Moira's shrill voice admonishing his posture. "We're doomed. I had one job and I couldn't do it. I'm the creative voice! Who asks the visionary to arrange the folding chairs? No one!"

"Patrick does," Stevie reminded him.

David brightened at Patrick's name. "He does. He shouldn't, but he does."

"Eternal optimist."

"Yeah."

Before the dopey smile could spread entirely over David's face, Stevie sighed and said, "Fine. I'll do it. I'll marry you." She bit her lip, wincing. "I mean, I'll perform the ceremony. Of marriage. Yours, to Patrick."

"Don't be ridiculous, you're my best man already." David picked at her plate of fries, then shrugged and pulled the whole thing towards him.

"Limited time offer," she said lowly.

He glanced up. "And on what authority, precisely, can you perform a marriage?"

She looked away and took a breath, held it, then met his eyes again. "On account of I'm a very powerful witch."

He laughed, then, when she didn't crack a smile, cried a little and finished her milkshake. Stevie got up, paid her check at the counter, and made for the door. David hurried to catch up.

Outside the cafe, Stevie took David by the shoulders and turned him in the direction of the store.

"Oh, no, we're finishing this conversation!" He spun back around and stalked after her toward her car.

He babbled and raved the whole drive back to the motel, then crowded after her as she took her seat back at the front desk.

"I'm sorry, exactly how long were you planning on keeping this secret identity a, a—" David scowled. "A secret?"

"Figured you knew," Stevie said. David was gasping for breath, spluttering, flailing his arms and occasionally pointing at her with a shaky finger.

"Knew? KNEW? Knew _what_ , precisely?"

"I'm a witch," she replied and turned the page in her magazine. "Whole town's witches. Kind of a meta-coven, really. Whole assembly of covens."

"No," David said and shook his head wildly. "No."

"Always kind of thought you were one, too," she continued without looking up.

"Excuse me? What would make you think that I! That!" He ran out of words but not energy then, so he stood stockstill and shook his hands before him. The gesture was half-"warding off bad smells" and half-"appealing for help, anyone, _please_ ".

"You and your mom and your..." She tilted her head. "Fashion ensembles."

He drew a deep breath. "Just because I favor a monochromatic palette — which is _classic_ , by the way! Ask Anna Wintour! — in no way means that I am, am a —"

"Witch," she said for him, nodding. "No, I know that now."

"What's more, I do _not_ dress like my mother."

"No, of course not," she said smoothly. "My mistake."

"I should say so."

David needed to clear his head. He messaged Patrick forty-seven times and walked the perimeter of the parking lot. Then he got overheated and went to his room to cool off.

Patrick called him just as he was applying a cold can of beer to the nape of his neck.

"Witch's Creek," Patrick said. "Some call it Schitt's Coven, but I don't think Roland as High Priest really needs any more to feel smug about."

David sat up straight. "You _knew_?"

"Of course. I'm surprised you didn't, given our specialized inventory."

"Our _what_?"

"Locally-sourced herbs and botanicals, David? Crystals from the quarry? Tinctures and tisanes? Salves and essential oils?" Patrick had this way of sounding patient but also amused; Stevie called it his "David voice" but David didn't think it sounded like him at all.

David sat down heavily. "Oh, my _god_."

"Buck up," Patrick said. He was always so cheery: David hated that about him as much as he loved it. "You've gone this long without knowing and done just fine."

"But —"

"Sweetness, I have to go," Patrick cut in. "We're about to do trust falls."

They did have a lot of customers asking about the resonances of various products, now that David thought about it. He'd simply assumed, given how far behind he was on his GOOP reading, that this was some new trend.

*

David threw open the office door. It bounced back, swinging shut in his face, so on the second try, he opened it more slowly.

"Hello," Stevie said, giving him her best customer-service smile. She was terrible at that, so she looked like she was about to hurl. "How may I help you today, sir?"

"Prove it." He crossed his arms.

"Prove what, sir?"

He exhaled gustily. "I'm waiting."

"Never figured you for such an _empiricist_ ," she muttered. He kept glaring. He could have kept it up for hours on end; they both knew that. "Fine."

Stevie pointed her index finger at a lamp on the side table behind David. The air shimmered briefly as a scent like ozone and grapefruit burst and the lamp started rocking back and forth. The sound of a clearing throat came from the bulb before the lamp spun around and starting singing "Hello! Ma Baby" like Michigan J. Frog. As it substituted dramatic hops for the high steps in the original cakewalk, it didn't take long before it fell off the table and crashed at David's feet.

He and Stevie looked at each other. She was smiling slightly.

"What's going on in here? Stevie! David! Motel furnishings are not _toys_." Johnny stood in the door to the back office, his shirt rumpled amid other tell-tale signs of a desk nap — mussed hair, creases on one cheek.

"Dad!" David said. "Stevie's a witch!"

"That's not very nice, David. Go get a broom and clean up your mess. Honestly, rough-housing in a place of business? At your age?"

"When have you ever known me to rough-house?"

Johnny blinked several times. "I'm sure you have."

Stevie crooked her index finger and drew tiny circles in the air. The lamp shards leaped up and reassembled themselves; the shade took a little longer to right itself, before it hopped back on top.

"See?!" David shouted. "What is this?"

"Well, I'm sure I don't know, David," Johnny replied. "Why don't you ask Stevie?"

*

Back in his room, he managed to get Alexis on Whatsapp, but rather than commiserating and freaking out with him, she wrinkled her adorably sunburnt nose and criticized him.

"Honestly, David, how could you not know?"

"That's not the issue here!"

She brushed hair from her eyes. "You spend so much time worrying what other people think of you! But somehow you never notice what they're doing and thinking and saying? How does that work?"

"Okay, Margaret Mead, I suppose _you_ are way more in touch with the town's occult reality?"

She looked entirely too pleased with herself. "I got my brass laurel right before I left!"

He didn't know what she was talking about, let alone what to respond.

"It's the cutest little coronet," Alexis continued, circling her hand around her head to demonstrate. For a moment, the crown appeared, transparent but unmistakable.

"Oh, my _god_ ," David said and nearly dropped his phone. "I thought that was just your latest futile attempt to keep shabby boho chic going!"

"Anyway, I have to go, there's an alpha iguana who needs his shiatsu..."

"Alexis!"

"You know who you should ask? Stevie! She's pretty tight with the coven."

He dropped his phone and fell back onto his bed, arm over his eyes.

*

When David was six, he was at dinner with his parents as a special treat. It was difficult to follow their conversation, since it was about people he didn't know and things he'd never heard of, but he tried hard to keep up.

Johnny was elated about opening a Rose Video in Moscow. "Just like Pizza Hut! Bringing the best of democracy at reasonable prices past the Iron Curtain. I tell you, Moira, perestroika's a wonderful thing."

For her part, Moira was preoccupied by the prospect of sapphic subtext in a Sunrise Bay storyline.

While the waiter was refilling the wine, David took his chance. "What's perestroika? And what're tribades?"

His parents looked at each other. Johnny started to cough, but Moira reached over to take David's hand.

"Don't ask questions you don't know the answer to," she said, which contradicted everything he'd learned in school, both the Waldorf one and the regular one. She patted his hand. "No one likes a mouth-breathing ignoramus, darling."

Johnny wheezed into his napkin and finally managed to say, "How's the boy supposed to learn, Moira?"

She ignored him, focusing all her attention on David. As much as he usually longed for her attention, this was terrifying. He tried not to cringe away as she continued, "If you don't know something, by all means, _act as if it doesn't matter_."

He took this advice to heart, and it served him well for a long time. Decades, even.

Now, however, he was having _a lot_ of trouble maintaining blithe disregard for others' reality. Not knowing something so fundamental about his best friend and his sister bothered him. His ignorance was an itch down his spine he couldn't reach, a hum of static from a distant room, a hangnail catching on a mohair cuff.

"I'm sorry," he announced when he found Stevie in the motel parking lot. The sun loitered over the horizon, streaking the clouds orange and lavender, while the shadows stretched endlessly long.

"For?"

He grimaced. "I should have accepted you immediately and without judgment or much fuss."

"Did you make a fuss?" She shaded her eyes with her hand. "It's so hard to tell, given how laidback you are."

He gave her a tight smirk. "Hilarious. So are we okay?"

"Were we not?"

He sat on the hood of her shitty car. "Since you're a witch, why don't you conjure a better car?"

"Since you're not a witch," she said, sitting next to him and digging in her messenger bag for her hash pipe, "Why don't you shut it?"

"Fair," he admitted, and tipped his head against her shoulder while she got the pipe going. Her hair blew across his face and he thought he heard her chuckle.  



End file.
